Vision In Blue

April's new titles have changed a bit in the last week. First I picked my favourites out of the buyer's notes, then I put them all in the page and put their descriptions... but going back over them and reading a longer description I came to realise how truly misleading buyer's notes are! You only have one or two lines to go off so they should entice you and give you a good idea of what the book is... yes? No... I deleted about five titles and pondered a couple of others after realising that actually the two different descriptions did not lead me in the same direction at all. So here, after much deliberation are my... oh lord, sorry... 23 picks for April! --- The Art Of Not Breathing by Sarah Alexander 9781474903066 When Elsie is underwater the pain eases. Her twin brother disappeared five years ago and hasn't been seen since. Underwater Elsie has flashbacks to times when her family wasn't dissolving, flashbacks that might lead her to answers. I'm no...

Lorna Bradbury, Daily Telegraph's book reviews editor, talks to acclaimed writers, Liz Kessler ( Read Me Like A Book ), Bali Rai ( (Un)arranged Marriage ) and Shannon Cullen from Penguin Random House about the need for diversity in children's books and what that really means. No topic is off limits. I've included the description of this Bath Children's Literature Festival event because as was admitted on the stage, it wasn't really a debate, more of a discussion as all the panelists had the same view. Simply summed up, the consensus is yes we need more diversity, but the real question is where does that diversity need to come from? I'll just pick up on a couple of the topics mentioned, other wise I'll end up waffling for ages on this topic. Encouraging creative writing. There are stories of people who read books to their kids and realised that if they wanted diversity they were going to have to write it themselves. As sad as it is to hear this it i...